Otter Point 

      The original inhabitants of Cortes were the Coast Salish who occupied both the east and west coasts of the island. They suffered at the hands of raiding tribes and were almost eliminated by the smallpox epidemic of 1862. Today the Klahoose Salish live at Squirrel Cove, having arrived on Cortes from Toba Inlet after the missionaries arrived in the 1890's.

      The explorers, the surveyors and the whalers came and went. The miners came, staked claims and left. Japanese loggers came with horses and left. Then came the settlers. The first white settler on Cortes was Michael Manson, who arrived in 1866, preempting land the following year and receiving his crown grant in 1913. With Michael came his brother John and a friend, George Leask, both of whom preempted land in 1888. At that time there were no roads, no buildings and no steam ship service to or from civilization. There were no gas engines and transportation was by rowboat or dugout canoe. (John Manson did a phenomenal amount of rowing in those early days, taking meat orders to logging camps. He once rowed 100 miles each wav to the head of Knight Inlet and back to bring out two school girls to board at the Manson's home and raise the number of available pupils to the number required to open a school.)

      At the turn of the century there was a population rush on Cortes consisting mainly of hand-loggers who often working on one place just long enough to make a stake and move on somewhere else. It was replaced by the slow but steady influx of homesteaders. The population reached a zenith in the 1920's then dropped off again due to the rigours of isolation, the economic depression and the high cost of transportation. The Union Steamship was the main tie to the outside world at that time. There are still reminders of those long gone settlers in the form of twisted fruit trees in old long abandoned orchards.

      Population figures picked up again after the 16 car ferry, Cortes Queen, began it's regular run to and from Quadra Island in 1969, and electric power arrived in 1970. Today the island is an intriguing mix of the old and new. Along with the early settlers and their descendants there are the more recent 'settlers' , people of all ages and backgrounds who have come here in search of a more independent and casual lifestyle free from many of the troubling complexities of modern existence.